"Diaries in the Kitchen"

"In the head of a poet crazy with drunkenness
I don’t know the time nor the space
And I shake his sonnet from the inside."
"Spirit". G. Sapgir

Gallery Vellum presents the exhibition Diaries in the Kitchen, which will be held from April 15 to July 15, 2021. and for the first time, as if in an imaginary "sixties" kitchen, apartment house or workshop, it will unite the works of the artists of the Second Russian Avant-garde Igor Voroshilov, Vladimir Yakovlev, Pyotr Belenk, Mikhail Grobman and Ernst Neizvestny. In total, more than 40 works of painting, graphics and sculpture will be presented. This circle included many poets and writers. First of all, Genrikh Sapgir, Igor Kholin, Gennady Aigi, their follower Alexander Volovik and many others. At the exhibition, their poems will be presented alongside works of art.

Bright representatives of unofficial art, they took an active part in the artistic life of the generation and went through the difficult path of nonconformists, artists of the "troubled" time 1950-70. last century. Often they were united by the kitchen, where they gathered, read poetry, discussed exhibitions and creative directions.

Igor Voroshilov (1939-1989) always talked about art as an instrument transmitting extra-political, transcendental, philosophical and religious views. For the 60s of the last century, religion was that key, that pure philosophical line that filled their lives and introduced them to art. Voroshilov said: “It is impossible to explain harmony. This is the Spirit becoming the Cosmos ", and all his life he wrote poems -" the diaries of the spirit ", which, by the way, urged all artists to keep the favorite poet of Igor Voroshilov - Velimir Khlebnikov: and keep accurate records of the rising and setting of the stars of your spirit. " Melancholic female portraits, low-key landscapes - all this refers to the artist’s own theory that the painting is “a newly built world of goodness and beauty, a manifested paradise,the comprehension of which is the goal of art ”.

Vladimir Yakovlev (1934-1998) - a bright and, perhaps, one of the most famous nonconformist artists, a representative of the generation of the "sixties", did not receive any professional education. And as a painter, he was formed, in many ways, under the influence of impressions from the Western avant-garde, which he saw at the VI World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957 in Moscow. His cool and restrained gouaches, as well as the famous lonely "flowers" will be seen by a visitor to the "Diaries in the Kitchen" exhibition, and will once again be convinced of the incredible hidden energy of the artist’s creativity.

Petr Belenok (1938-1991) - artist, sculptor, went the "usual" way of a non-conformist artist, at the end of the 1960s he moved to Moscow, where he took part in apartment exhibitions. The artist himself defined his own style. He called it "panic realism", used an unusual technique of painting and collage, often with disastrous subjects. Laconic images were created using a simple black and white palette. The artist said that he chose for himself the position of a neutral observer of the world around him, watching him from space.

Mikhail Grobman (b. 1939) is a poet and artist who long ago moved from Russia to Israel; in the 1960s he became a theorist of Russian art and a very active participant in the Second Russian Avant-garde movement. Actually, this definition, which, however, is not recognized by all art critics, he came up with.

Also, the exhibition will feature several sculptural works by a like-minded and contemporary Ernst Neizvestny (1925-2016), who worked in very different forms and directions. All the works of this exhibition convey to us the spirit of that time and in different ways, each in its own way, show the ways of searching for meanings and reasons.